The biggest problem with the Army's authorized armor

[jmowreader]

There are some threads on DU about the Army's new directive to not wear anything but issue armor.

The issue armor is a product called the Interceptor Outer Tactical Vest. It relies on ceramic plates--when a round hits the ceramic plate, the energy from the bullet is transferred to the plate, shattering the plate in the process.

The standard weapon used by the Old Iraqi Army (OIA) is the AK-47. It is a selective-fire weapon--you can choose to shoot single rounds out of it like a rifle, or you can set it to full-auto and use it like a machinegun. The selector switch on an AK-47 is vertical; the top position is safe, then full-auto, then single-fire. The weapon isn't all that accurate (the sights are too close together, for one thing, and the muzzle climbs when you fire it) so most guys put the switch in the rock & roll position and squeeze off bursts.

So let's get this straight: you've got on an Interceptor vest, a device which is intended to break when used. A member of the OIA shoots you center-of-mass with his AK-47. The first bullet hits the plate, shatters it and becomes lodged in the vest. That's fine, that's what's supposed to happen. Now! What do you do about the other two or three inbound bullets?

Don't write this off as a far-fetched scenario; Pinnacle's website is full of testimonials from guys who were hit by three-round bursts from AK-47s in Iraq and thought so highly of the fact that the Pinnacle Dragon Skin armor they had on stopped all three rounds that they picked up pen and paper.

When you're fighting guys who are ALL firing full-auto, first-round performance isn't all that critical--hell, armor that's so cheap even the Army will buy it will stop the first round. Second-round and third-round performance is the issue. Dragon Skin has been adequately tested for its follow-on-round performance by guys who've actually been shot while wearing the armor. The Interceptor vest's follow-on-round performance has been tested too. We usually get the results of those tests back in boxes with flags on them.

I think I figured out how to get Dragon Skin to the troops. All that needs to be done is for Pinnacle to name a Bush crony to a position in the company that doesn't actually do anything, mark up the cost of its armor 140 percent (using the extra 40 percent to pay the Bush crony), and then Dragon Skin will be the new official armor of choice for troops worldwide.

Dragon Skin is the choice of the Secret Service. If it's good enough for the people who defend Bush's worthless life, it should be plenty good for the people who defend Bush's oil.

[Canuckistanian]

1. All good points - and a good suggestion

BTW, does that ban also apply to the officers who wear Dragon Skin armor?

[jmowreader]

10. Probably.

You think the Bush crony that's running Servicemembers Group Life Insurance (the source of the largest sum of money a soldier's family gets after he dies in combat--$200,000 IIRC) wants to pay out?

And look at it as an added bonus: if Colonel Mustard or General Custer (the asshat senate candidate we've been bitching about for the last couple of days has a picture of the General Custer who's currently on active duty on his website) gets killed while wearing Dragon Skin, not only does the army get to dance around yelling "see? We told you it didn't work!" but they get to say "if we revoked General Custer's death benefits because he was wearing the wrong armor, do you think we'd treat YOU any different?"

[HereSince1628]

2. You go to war with the equipment that makes someone a profit

you do not go to war with the equipment that you'd want to save your life.

[Ravenseye]

3. How much does it cost?

I'm assuming it's expensive.

[Solly Mack]

4. It's not far-fetched. The vest issued by the military can't

take repeated rounds. With each round, starting with the very first one, the vest is more and more compromised - far less effective with each "thud!" of a round. Those vests are not designed to withstand repeated hits(as few as 3). They must be replaced each time they're compromised.(and they're not)

Well, I'll clarify - when my husband was in Iraq, 2003-2004, soldiers were not getting new vest when their vest became compromised.

Course, it took my husband half a year to get a vest issued that was made AFTER Vietnam. Prior to his new vest, he wore a vest meant to stop rounds from the Vietnam war. Nice, huh?

He was just lucky he never took a hit.

[jmowreader]

11. Tell him to feel extremely lucky

The Vietnam-era flak vest isn't made to stop bullets at all. It's made to stop fragments from bursting grenades, mortar shells and artillery rounds. This it does well.

It'll kinda slow down a bullet some, but you can stack three Nam flak vests and fire an AK-47 round through all three. I don't know if the fourth one will stop the bullet because they only gave us three to shoot up.

[Richard Steele]

5. The military-issue armor is DISPOSABLE armor.

It works once, but then you need to throw it away.
That's the nature of those antiballistic ceramic plates;
they work well, but they only work ONCE.

The military-issue armor, by its very design,
is completely unsuitable for military use.

[Kelvin Mace]

7. But by God

it makes the vendor a ton of cash.

[Richard Steele]

8. And, after all, isn't that what's REALLY important?

Important to B*shCabal™, that is....

[Toots]

Good comments except over sixty percent of injuries are not from bullets

Usually shrapnel or flying rocks and twigs. It is a matter of liteness and mobility more than stopping more than one bullet at a time..:shrug: Remember it is all better than what we had forty years ago.

[jmowreader]

13. Dragon Skin is flexible, adding to the soldier's mobility

Which is all academic when you died because the landmine that went off under your unarmored HMMWV blew your legs off and all your blood ran out before someone could put tourniquets on you, or it sent both of your vehicle's batteries through your ass taking all your internal organs with them...

The "better than what we had forty years ago" kinda skirts the whole point. Yes, it's better than what we used in Nam. Hell, you can buy this armored t-shirt out of Soldier of Fortune magazine that's better than what we used in Nam. (No, I'm not kidding. There's some outfit that advertises in there that sells body armor for police and security guards; it's a t-shirt that has pockets for holding armor plates that will stop pistol rounds.) The point is that the armor our soldiers are sent on patrol wearing is not good enough, while a much superior armor technology is available but the troops have been ordered not to wear it.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. Your scenario is NOT far-fetched

Modern assault rifles are designed with a setting to fire three-round bursts so that one well-placed shot is really three well-placed shots.

The designer of this armour is an idiot.

[benEzra]

9. The M16A2 has a 3-round burst setting, but the much older

AK-47 (speaking of real ones here, not civilian lookalikes like those available in the U.S.) has a 3-position selector with safe, automatic, and single shot as the only 3 settings, and I think the AK-74 is the same way. Most of the insurgents in Iraq are armed with AK-47's.

A real AK-47 will crank off a 3-shot burst, but it won't do it for you like an M16A2; you have to release the trigger after a third of a second or so or else you will get more than 3 rounds downrange.

[jmowreader]

12. Who ever heard of three well-placed shots out of a Kalashnikov?

When you fire a Kalashnikov rifle, the muzzle climbs; the shot group on an AK set to automatic (no "three-round burst" position on an AK; it flies in the face of the Soviet directive to make weapons as simple to manufacture as possible to put something like that on a communist rifle) looks like a vertical line.

Which means the first round breaks the plate and the next two go into the soldier above the point of impact for the first.